World Health Organization Warns Farmers To Stop Using Antibiotics In Healthy Animals

The World Health Organization (WHO) has set forward a formal recommendation to farmers and the food industry to prevent them using antibiotics in healthy animals to promote growth and prevent disease. If we want to maintain the effectiveness of antibiotics, this can be of paramount importance.

The recommendation comes after a review paper was published in The Lancet Planetary Health. The research found that by restricting the number of antibiotics in food-producing animals, the number of antibiotic-resistant germs in these animals dropped by around 39 percent.

Antibiotic resistance is a serious and global threat. Researchers and policy makers around the world are worried that the overuse or misuse of antibiotics might cause the formation of a infectious microbe that we cannot kill. There are already several bacteria that are immune to all of our antibiotics or most.

“A deficiency of effective antibiotics is as severe a security threat as a surprising and fatal disease epidemic,” Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO, said in a announcement. “Strong, sustained activity across all sectors is critical if we are to turn back the wave of antimicrobial resistance and keep the world safe.”

There are countries around the world where 80 percent of antibiotics are utilized to make healthy animals grow. Stopping this is. They also indicate that, whenever possible, sick animals are treated with the antibiotics that are “least important” into human health, rather than the most effective ones which for many folks may be the last source against certain ailments, like the superbug MRSA.

“Scientific evidence shows that overuse of antibiotics in animals might contribute to the emergence of antibiotic resistance,” added Dr Kazuaki Miyagishima, Director of the Department of Food Safety and Zoonoses in the WHO. “The volume of antibiotics used in animals is continuing to grow worldwide, driven by an increasing demand for foods of animal origin, often produced through intensive animal husbandry. ”

Curbing use can be accomplished by improving animals’ living conditions and hygiene, and by vaccinating them. Several nations have already implemented these policies and some have banned the use of antibiotics to enhance growth. This practice has been illegal in the European Union because 2006.